building a stylish home, one paycheck at a time

Next Project: Finish the Front Entry

Okay, Bryce has next week off, so our goal is to finish the front entry project we started last year, almost to date.

Working on the front entry last year

Here’s how it looked before.

Front entry before

We lived with this temporary entry staircase since we started building the house in 2007. We have lived with the temporary door since we finished drywall the day after our wedding, September 12, 2009. We have lived with the partially finished siding and partially painted house for the last 4 years when we had to fire the foreman for taking naps in his car in our driveway on the clock.

So! Last year we drew up a pretty plan and got to work.

Last year’s front deck progressLandscaping with gabionsGabion work from last yearFront entry last year

And, that’s all we got done last year!

We started late July and then got a call that Bryce’s dad was in the hospital. So we spent the rest of the summer and early fall driving back and forth to Portland dealing with his dad’s death. That’s just how things go when you’re living in a house when you build it. Life just comes first.

Since last year we have been using the garage as our main entrance. On the up side, leaving the mounds of dirt for so long, they have had plenty of time to settle, so they will be super solid when we put 2 more gabions in and a truckload or two of more dirt.

Now that Bryce has a week off, we have purchased the gabion cages (gabion tutorial here), ordered the rock to fill it, and reserved the dingo to push all of this stuff around the front entry.